Author Otus is Scharf | Lensrentals Blog

I'm Roger and I am the founder of Lensrentals.com. Hailed as one of the optic nerds here, I enjoy shooting collimated light through 30X microscope objectives in my spare time. When I do take real pictures I like using something different: a Medium format, or Pentax K1, or a Sony RX1R.
Lenses and Optics
By Roger Cicala
I’m probably setting myself up for a replay of the Exo Tria Arxidia scene, but my friend Bernhard introduced me to the German term scharf the other day. It can mean both sharp and hot (as in spicy, or as in, you know, hot). After testing our first copies of the Zeiss 55mm f/1.4 Otus lens I […]
Lenses and Optics
By Roger Cicala
I’m going to open a can of worms today. I’ve been getting more and more emails from people telling me the same story that goes like this: I’ve got this lens. It’s awful. I’ve sent it in for adjustment and the service center tells me it’s ‘in spec’ and nothing is wrong with it. Am […]
Equipment
By Roger Cicala
The Silence We have a routine when a new lens comes out at Lensrentals: the first new copies get sent to me for optical testing. I have about 4 or 5 hours with them because they’ll have to be packed up and shipped out to the customers that have been waiting for them and expect […]
Equipment
By Roger Cicala
Way back when, I wrote about the dust problems we were seeing in Nikon D600 cameras. There was enough of a furor about it that when the Nikon D610 was released I assumed that the dust problem would be fixed. But I’m rather the paranoid type, and I never like assumptions, so as soon […]
Other
By Roger Cicala
When I came up with the idea for the Photogeek Geek Photo Contest, it was mostly for fun. I didn’t think too many people would actually enter. But at last count there are nearly 100 entries up on the contest page already. There are even a couple of people who managed to capture the bokeh […]